McKinsey and Company Exposed for Ongoing Harm to Public Health

By Kimberly J. Soenen | April 26, 2022

Dear Readers,

This morning, Joshua M. Sharfstein (@drJoshS), a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins and the former principal deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2009 to 2011, published an OpEd in the New York Times about the harm to Public Health / Global Health that McKinsey and Company has imposed for decades.

Whether you live in a remote rural area, or in the heart of major metropolitan area, this is an important OpEd to read in order to understand the scope and scale of harm that McKinsey and Company causes domestically and internationally.

An excerpt follows:

The managing partner of the global consulting firm McKinsey will testify before Congress on Wednesday to respond to a stunning congressional report revealing that his company’s consultants were simultaneously working for Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the opioid OxyContin, and the Food and Drug Administration.

As McKinsey was sending what one consultant called a “mini army” to serve Purdue Pharma — which would later declare bankruptcy while facing thousands of lawsuits over its role in the opioid epidemic — it was advising the F.D.A. on how to organize the offices overseeing the safety of opioids and other medications.

Independence from the companies that sell regulated products is essential to the F.D.A.’s effectiveness and credibility. The hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is likely to focus on whether McKinsey — which recently paid nearly $600 million to settle state investigations into its own role in the opioid epidemic — crossed ethical and legal lines. It should also cover the threat to the integrity of policymaking at the F.D.A. This is not the first time that questions of conflict of interest have roiled the F.D.A., and the agency should review what happened to learn lessons for the future.

I worked at the F.D.A. as the principal deputy commissioner, the agency’s second in command, from March 2009 to January 2011, when some of these activities described in the report took place. I recall meeting a few times with McKinsey consultants named in the report, so I keenly read the finding that the company may not have disclosed its conflicts of interest as required by federal law. (McKinsey has said that it did not have to make any disclosures because its work with pharmaceutical companies did not create a conflict of interest with its work with the F.D.A.)”

In the weeks ahead, the “SOME PEOPLE” (Every)Body collective will release a short film about three of the most insidious companies working in the health and healthcare space: Anthem /  Blue Cross Blue Shield, McKinsey and Company and Baker McKenzie. These companies all reside in one building in Chicago.

Read more here about the astonishing conflicts of interest and how McKinsey profits from harm to Public and Global Health:

Congress Has to Ask How Much McKinsey Hurt the F.D.A.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/opinion/mckinsey-fda-opioids.html?referringSource=articleShare

To Health,

Kimberly